According to a belief in the Northwest Territories, finding a dime suggests that a dead person is thinking of us from “the other world”. When told of this belief by Dene artist Nahka Bertrand, Sarah Zakaib began collecting dimes.
“I was wondering what I was going to do with all those coins,” she says. Then came the idea of using it to put on a show about murdered and missing women. This show has become Anaskan, presented at the OFFTA, which features four artists, four women members of the collective that now bears the name of Dimes. The performance will take, the 1er and June 2, the form of a stroll starting at Place de la Paix and ending on the stage of the Théâtre Aux Écuries.
“It’s not necessarily the coin, but it’s just the idea of communicating or thinking a little about those who are no longer there. These indigenous women, we don’t know where they are, it came to touch on an emotional level, ”continues Sarah Zakaib.
It has been established, notably by Amnesty International, that aboriginal women are at least six times more likely to be murdered than the national average.
Eruoma Awashish, another of the four artists on stage in Anaskancomes from the Attikamek community of Manawan.
“Me, it is certain that my nation is very touched, very shaken by the death of Joyce Echaquan, she said. It’s not settled. In my opinion, it is still very painful for the Attikameks. I always have a thought for her. »
The other two Dimes artists are Sarah Cleary, an Innu from Mashteuiash, and Nahka Bertrand. Three of the collective’s artists come from the world of visual arts. And the costumes designed for the performance, all set with dimes, testify to this. Here, the silver coin is diverted from its common meaning, that of currency of exchange, to become an object of art.
“We each have costumes based on the symbolism of the coin, the materiality,” says Sarah Zakaib.
“This symbol has become an interesting material to work with. The currency is a strong symbol of capitalism, and together with the face of the queen, it is also a symbol of colonialism. The group also finds it amusing that the word ” dimes which designates a ten-sou piece in English, gives in French “tithes”, an allusion to collections of money from churches.